


miles high off in the distance

by jk_rockin



Series: overburdened with too many things [2]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: M/M, Real Soft Boy Hours, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Watching Someone Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:28:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28009233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jk_rockin/pseuds/jk_rockin
Summary: It was the ice that woke Thomas- a long, creaking groan, not unlike the captain waking in pain. He opened one eye just a sliver to check, and found the bed empty. Before he could start out of the chair, the door of the cabin slid open, and Captain Crozier shuffled in, still in his nightshirt. He closed his eye again. If the captain was well enough to get himself out of bed and back in again, he could safely doze for another moment.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Thomas Jopson
Series: overburdened with too many things [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2051478
Comments: 8
Kudos: 24





	miles high off in the distance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [robotboy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotboy/gifts).



> Tumblr ask box prompt fic for robotboy, for the prompt "Jopson/Crozier, 'things you said when you thought i was asleep'". Originally posted [here](https://jkrockin.tumblr.com/post/637185801790390272/jopsoncrozier-things-you-said-when-you-thought-i).
> 
> Title from _Even When I'm Sleeping_ by Leonardo's Bride, because I am a basic bitch. I cannot imagine what I could possibly have put in this that might need tagging for, but if you see something, etc etc.

It was the ice that woke Thomas- a long, creaking groan, not unlike the captain waking in pain. He opened one eye just a sliver to check, and found the bed empty. Before he could start out of the chair, the door of the cabin slid open, and Captain Crozier shuffled in, still in his nightshirt. He closed his eye again. If the captain was well enough to get himself out of bed and back in again, he could safely doze for another moment.

"Jopson?" Crozier whispered. When Thomas didn't answer, the captain huffed a sigh of relief, and slid the door shut. Moving with what he evidently took for stealth, he crept across the narrow cabin and sat down on the edge of the bed with a groan, making such a racket Thomas almost laughed and gave himself away.

Another sigh, and Thomas felt fingertips drift over the back of his hand. A dainty caress, but not shy; Crozier must be very sure that Thomas was asleep. “A man with half a conscience would wake you- let you sleep in a bed, for once,” the captain said, very low.

Thomas didn’t want to sleep in a bed. Not his own, cold, cramped little berth, at least, not when it was warm and snug in the captain’s cabin and he knew he was welcome in it, not when he could hear his captain breathing and feel him near. A crick in the neck was nothing to that.

“Selfish,” said Crozier, and his hand moved, brushing the hair that had fallen over Thomas’s forehead behind his ear, and tracing, feather-light, over his cheekbone and his jaw. “Keeping you all to myself like this.”

It required an effort not to hold his breath, or to move unduly, but he knew the minute the captain knew him to be awake, he would draw back; he would fold up into himself like a furled sail and say no more about it, and the next time he saw Thomas sleeping, he would not touch him again.

That was a thought. Had he touched Thomas like this before? Tom had woken from more than one unplanned nap in this very chair, with the captain snoring in his bed place. Once, back in the Antarctic, after a long and sleepless night in risky ice, he’d fallen asleep with a candlestick in one hand and the polishing cloth in the other, and woken to Crozier’s hand on his shoulder, and a gentle but insistent escort to his bed. He could very well have done just this, any of those times.

"What would I do without you, lad,” said the captain, so softly Thomas might have imagined it. The warmth of Crozier’s hand was perceptible, even though it only skimmed his cheek, and the edge of a thumb, calluses softened by long inactivity, grazed the very edge of his mouth.

Thomas did not want his captain to do without him. He did not want Crozier to find out what it was to wish for him and not find him to hand. To not grasp him by the neck of his shirt and tell him so with his eyes open was all he could bodily do, and being so occupied, he could not help but turn, just a little, into that delicate touch, and let his lips brush the swell of his captain’s palm.

The captain did not immediately pull away, and for just a moment it was almost, almost what Thomas wanted, almost- and then the captain sighed again, and the warmth of his hand was gone, and he was turning to face the ship’s wall, burrowing down under the covers.

For a long time, Thomas stayed in the chair, watching the rise and fall of Crozier’s shoulders as his breathing evened out into the rhythm of sleep, with his own hand pressed to his mouth, where his captain’s hand had been.

**Author's Note:**

> Please come and scream about icy lads with me [on tumblr](https://jkrockin.tumblr.com/) or [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/jk_rockin).


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